


if I was born as a blackthorn tree

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: Venom (Movie 2018)
Genre: Bonding, Canon Compliant, Developing Relationship, Fix-It, Other, eat the rich
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-17
Updated: 2018-10-17
Packaged: 2019-08-03 17:31:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,324
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16330493
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: “This is the higher life form,” Drake says above her.He has no idea.The words aren’t hers but she clings to them. He has no idea. They drag her out of the room. He has no idea. They dump her in the woods with all the rest. He has no idea.She rises when they are well gone, the symbiote soaking back into her. It offers her glasses, only a little smudged. An act of… if not strictly kindness, then regard for her. She is touched.





	if I was born as a blackthorn tree

**Author's Note:**

> Dora survived the movie, and that's that on that. 
> 
> Cheers to roguewen for betaing this.

The scanners are off in the room where Drake leaves her to die. It is their only advantage.

The first question Dora asks the symbiote is, “Do you want to survive this?”

She feels its attention focus, its grip constrict. It has not been long enough in her mind to acquire the language, but yes, it wants. How it  _wants_. A form of life, at any rate.

“Possum,” she says, and it takes the meaning from the image in her mind.

The pain folds her. She bends double and feels it seep past her fingers where they clutch her side. Her glasses slip off. She follows them to the floor.

When the door opens, the thread of symbiote still inside stops her heart and lungs.

“This is the higher life form,” Drake says above her.

 _He has no idea_. The words aren’t hers but she clings to them. He has no idea. They drag her out of the room. He has no idea. They dump her in the woods with all the rest. He has no idea.

She rises when they are well gone, the symbiote soaking back into her. It offers her glasses, only a little smudged. An act of… if not strictly kindness, then regard for her. She is touched.

She takes a step, and her feet turn toward the compound.

 _Go back in, on our terms_. She hesitates, a taste of metal at the back of her mouth.  _He left you for dead. No more fear–you have me._

“I am a better person–” she starts, but in her head the words twist into  _higher life form_. She takes a deep breath. He can not be allowed to continue. She takes another step.

 _Wait_ , it says, and Dora does, her entire body paralyzed. She is wearing white in the woods, horribly exposed, but the child in the dark blue dress doesn’t seem to notice her. Perhaps she is sleepwalking; she moves on tired legs through the trees, toward the Foundation. Moonlight turns her hair silver. Dora’s first instinct, her human instinct, is to call out, but like a bad dream, her voice has shrunk to nothing.

 _Forget him_ , it says when the girl is gone.

“What happened to no more fear?”

_Go home and hold your children._

That does sound nice. “What do I call you?” she asks as they sprint with the stamina of a wolf.

 _Why does it matter?_  There is a sour note to the voice.  _You only think of me as an “it”._

“Do you… have genders?”

 _Not that you would recognize._   

“What about rank?”

_Riot was the leader. The others were grunts. I… am a strategist._

Then they’ll get along fine. “Do you prefer Possum, or Blue?”

_You’re the possum._

“Whatever you say, Blue.”

Her keys are in her coat, back at the Life Foundation, and she will never get them back. They scale the condo and slide the balcony door open. Her sister sleeps on the sofa, an unfinished brochure design before her. Dora closes her laptop and sets it on the coffee table, pulls the blanket over her.

The kids are asleep, her son with his covers all kicked off and her daughter sprawled sideways. Never, she thinks, remembering the girl in the woods all used up from the inside. Blue echoes,  _Never never never_. She touches their hair, and then goes to stand in front of the fridge.

“What is it you need? Why didn’t the fluids keep the others alive?”

 _Live flesh_ , Blue grins at her.

“Bullshit.” Her own vehemence startles her. “Cravings indicate deficiencies. We can figure this out. Think.”

_You produced it yourself. When you saw your children again._

“Sure, we all want more dopamine.” But which transmitter? Oxytocin? No, she’s past those days. On a hunch she goes to the pantry and gets her stash from the top shelf.

She keeps the good bars in an empty oatmeal box, out of her sister’s and her kids’ notice but without the indignity of hiding chocolate in her room. When she unwraps one and the scent hits, every cell of her stands at attention.  _Yes. Yesyesyesyesyesyes eat that eat it eatiteatit–_

“Fucksake,” she says, mouth full.

 _Haaaaaa_. Blue relaxes into her, tingling slightly. Dora starts to feel like this is a sustainable lifestyle, but that’s probably just the phenylethylamine talking.

She discards the ruin of the chocolate wrapper and wipes her face down with a dishrag. “That was expensive.”

 _Guests deserve the best._ It’s a remarkable impression of her mother’s voice.

“One tile a day.”

_Supplemented with heads._

“Pigeon heads.”

 _Fine_.

Dora checks herself in the mirror over the sink. Her eyes are bloodshot, but she was technically murdered earlier so that seems fair. She holds the arm of her glasses, hovering on the edge of taking them off to see if she even needs them anymore, but wimps out.

Her face is flushed. She gets the thermometer. 99.5. “Can you get that down a notch?”

 _Take a nap and I’ll optimize everything._  Her limbs grow heavy at once; the kitchen floor tempts her.

“I don’t want to be optimized, just… stable. Whatever comes next, I can’t be stuck in the bathroom when it happens.” The thing in the woods scared Blue, and if Drake has it they will know, and they will come for her.

But she does go to bed. She wakes before dawn and carries the kids, still in their pajamas, down to her sister’s Forester. She can lift both of them at once now. The car too, probably.

They find the northernmost branch of her credit union and wait until it opens, and her sister goes in with the power of attorney papers. Dora has sunglasses over her glasses and a floppy hat and a scarf and she slouches in the passenger seat in the parking lot, angled away from the security cameras. Her sister returns to the car with an entire zipper pouch of cash.

They drive up the One as far as the 101 and then turn east, and then north again at Eugene and on and on, stopping just south of the border because her sister doesn’t have a passport and Dora’s will surely be watched. Near Judy Reservoir she chooses a road at random and drives until she finds a For Sale By Owner sign at the end of a long driveway leading to an A-frame.

The kids warm up to the place. Her sister likes the quiet and focus. At night Dora takes long walks under abundant stars. The form she and Blue agree on is nine feet tall and thornbush thin. A hungry thing with claws as long as memory.

They bring home deer, field dressed and skinned, and her sister does not ask where or when she learned to hunt.

It isn’t until they go to the Mt. Vernon library so her sister can use the wi-fi to turn in her work that Dora finds out Drake is dead.

She sits for a long time with the front page in her hands. There is a sidebar on the class action settlement that is liquidating most of the Foundation, and she wonders if her old mailbox has a check in it right now.

“Are you the last?” she whispers.

Blue doesn’t answer, but Dora feels them yearning.

In order to look normal, even though no one is watching anymore, she turns to the Business page and pretends to read.

 _Look_ , Blue says, and Dora does.  _Wages up, benefits cut._

It’s barely an hour to Seattle. They can make it in forty minutes. She’s never tried but she feels it in the place where fear used to live and now there is only certainty.

The article includes a picture of the company’s CEO.  _He wants to get into space exploration_ , Blue purrs.

Until now, she’s always believed there was no such thing as ethical consumption. Dora folds the paper, and stands.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [your (first) final days on shit orb number one](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16433552) by [MMagpieMcCorkle](https://archiveofourown.org/users/MMagpieMcCorkle/pseuds/MMagpieMcCorkle)




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